More From Richard Dalby
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darkling_talesThe other week I was thrilled to find a copy of another Richard Dalby anthology, Dracula's Brood, containing vampire stories by relatively obscure authors more or less coeval with Bram Stoker. As it's an Equation Chiller edition, I had pretty much despaired of ever finding an affordable copy - most of the line seems to be out of print now, and a battered paperback of their A.M. Burrage collection Warning Whispers is currently going for £45 second-hand! But for some reason Dracula's Brood:Neglected Vampire Classics cost only a couple of quid via Fantastic Fiction. The Equation Chillers series came out in the nineties and was composed of titles by once famous pre-war ghost story authors who are now out of print, and in some cases the lesser-known or previously unpublished stories of authors who are still well-loved today. Thanks to the charity shops of the Westcountry I already have their collection of Algernon Blackwood's lesser-known stories, The Mist In The Mirror, and The Flint Knife, a book of uncollected E.F.Benson tales. Equation Chillers seem to be characterized by the scholarship of their editors and I enjoyed those two books a lot. Luckily Dracula's Brood holds its own in such company.
The stories are arranged in chronological order, ranging from the mid-Victorian era to the 40s. The first six stories appeared before the publication of Dracula in 1890, and it was interesting to play 'guess the influence', although I'm not an unqualified fan of earlier Victorian writing. And who could resist a story called The Man-Eating Tree? My favourite tale of this bunch actually hails from the pen of Anne Crawford, sister of the more famous F Marion Crawford, himself author of a vampire classic (and personal favourite) The Blood Is The Life. Once you've got over the somewhat flowery language and the outrageous deployment of national stereotypes, this tale of vampirism among a bunch of fey young artists in the Italian countryside has plenty of bite.
Moving on to the 'late Victorian' era, the reader is soon rewarded by a clutch of good stories. One of them, Mary Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne, is outstanding, though it can't be as obscure as the other ones in this book as I've seen it anthologized twice before! Mary Cholmondely's Let Loose is equally good - I don't think I've read a scarier description of a crypt anywhere - and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite is a suitably hysterical account of a phenomenon which has since gone on to gain a lot of currency in the genre, the 'psychic vampire'. For those in search of more thoroughly obscure writers there are two elegant treats by Hume Nisbet (The Vampire Maid and The Old Portrait) and another strange and lurid possession story by H.B.Marriot Wilson, The Stone Chamber. Further on, the 'decadent' school of fiction creeps in, ably represented by the great Vernon Lee (with what could be described as a pagan vampire story, Marsyas In Flandres) and Vincent Sullivan's demoniacal Will.
This brings us up to the early 20th century, my favourite era of supernatural fiction. The stories become more concise as the florid Victorian dialogue and gothic trappings fall away. Meanwhile, new forms of vampirism blossom and thrive, with everything from furniture to fingers posing a threat to our lifeblood. Horacio Quiroga's The Feather Pillow is extremely odd and could easily be mistaken for a prime example of 'modern gothic' with its surreal imagery and stripped-down style. (It's also one of only two non-British stories in the book!) This is followed by a couple of less interesting stories, a second-rate Algernon Blackwood tale (The Singular Death of Morton) and the anthology's only real dud, Aylmer Vance and the Vampire. Alice and Claude Askew's psychic detective was popular in his time, and has recently enjoyed a return to the mainstream bookshelf courtesy of Wordsworth Press, but I found his foray into the world of vampirism rather boring. It fails to deliver on the promise of the plot and Vance's weapons are highly unconvincing (he basically just thinks the evil away.)
Fast-forwarding past the First World War, we find some likeable stories by virtual unknowns. Another troublesome tree makes an appearance in The Sumach by Ulric Daubeny, who Richard Dalby considers to have been a writer of almost Jamesian potential until his untimely death at the age of 34. It's certainly a creepy tale, though not out-and-out terrifying. James himself is represented by Wailing Well, one of the book's more controversial choices since no vampiric activities are actually described beyond the attacking of schoolchildren. And why didn't Dalby include James' 'proper' vampire story, 'An Episode Of Cathedral History' instead? Mind you, Wailing Well is such a cracking story that it's hard to resent its presence here! Our journey through the history of vampire fiction draws to a close with another peculiar story, E.R.Punshon's The Living Stone. Written in the chatty style of E F Benson, it opens up startling new possibilities for sacrifical standing stones! It has a certain unintentionally comic element, but it's an engaging little curio and I liked the Devon moorland setting. It is left to Frederick Cowles to say the last word, which funnily enough represents a slide back in time to the mid-Victorian era with Princess Of Darkness, with its charmingly evil heroine and lush Eastern European backdrop. I quite enjoyed the blend of old-fashioned vampirism and modern, more concise writing style, and the ending managed to surprise me too.
All in all Dracula's Brood is a really first-class anthology, with enough obscure material to satisfy the most well-read fan of vampire fiction (and ghost stories in general.) Like the other Equation Chillers, it also benefits from a scholarly introduction by Dalby which places Dracula in its historical, social and literary context. There are even some lurid illustrations, including a reproduction of John Tenniel's satirical cartoon 'The Irish "Vampire"', which depicts a huge bat with, frankly, Bram Stoker's face, hovering over a sleeping Victorian belle whose bizarre proportions surely owe very little to Nature. What more do you want? Blood? :p You can also visit The Vault of Evil discussion board for a full contents list and a bit of discussion.
The stories are arranged in chronological order, ranging from the mid-Victorian era to the 40s. The first six stories appeared before the publication of Dracula in 1890, and it was interesting to play 'guess the influence', although I'm not an unqualified fan of earlier Victorian writing. And who could resist a story called The Man-Eating Tree? My favourite tale of this bunch actually hails from the pen of Anne Crawford, sister of the more famous F Marion Crawford, himself author of a vampire classic (and personal favourite) The Blood Is The Life. Once you've got over the somewhat flowery language and the outrageous deployment of national stereotypes, this tale of vampirism among a bunch of fey young artists in the Italian countryside has plenty of bite.
Moving on to the 'late Victorian' era, the reader is soon rewarded by a clutch of good stories. One of them, Mary Braddon's Good Lady Ducayne, is outstanding, though it can't be as obscure as the other ones in this book as I've seen it anthologized twice before! Mary Cholmondely's Let Loose is equally good - I don't think I've read a scarier description of a crypt anywhere - and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite is a suitably hysterical account of a phenomenon which has since gone on to gain a lot of currency in the genre, the 'psychic vampire'. For those in search of more thoroughly obscure writers there are two elegant treats by Hume Nisbet (The Vampire Maid and The Old Portrait) and another strange and lurid possession story by H.B.Marriot Wilson, The Stone Chamber. Further on, the 'decadent' school of fiction creeps in, ably represented by the great Vernon Lee (with what could be described as a pagan vampire story, Marsyas In Flandres) and Vincent Sullivan's demoniacal Will.
This brings us up to the early 20th century, my favourite era of supernatural fiction. The stories become more concise as the florid Victorian dialogue and gothic trappings fall away. Meanwhile, new forms of vampirism blossom and thrive, with everything from furniture to fingers posing a threat to our lifeblood. Horacio Quiroga's The Feather Pillow is extremely odd and could easily be mistaken for a prime example of 'modern gothic' with its surreal imagery and stripped-down style. (It's also one of only two non-British stories in the book!) This is followed by a couple of less interesting stories, a second-rate Algernon Blackwood tale (The Singular Death of Morton) and the anthology's only real dud, Aylmer Vance and the Vampire. Alice and Claude Askew's psychic detective was popular in his time, and has recently enjoyed a return to the mainstream bookshelf courtesy of Wordsworth Press, but I found his foray into the world of vampirism rather boring. It fails to deliver on the promise of the plot and Vance's weapons are highly unconvincing (he basically just thinks the evil away.)
Fast-forwarding past the First World War, we find some likeable stories by virtual unknowns. Another troublesome tree makes an appearance in The Sumach by Ulric Daubeny, who Richard Dalby considers to have been a writer of almost Jamesian potential until his untimely death at the age of 34. It's certainly a creepy tale, though not out-and-out terrifying. James himself is represented by Wailing Well, one of the book's more controversial choices since no vampiric activities are actually described beyond the attacking of schoolchildren. And why didn't Dalby include James' 'proper' vampire story, 'An Episode Of Cathedral History' instead? Mind you, Wailing Well is such a cracking story that it's hard to resent its presence here! Our journey through the history of vampire fiction draws to a close with another peculiar story, E.R.Punshon's The Living Stone. Written in the chatty style of E F Benson, it opens up startling new possibilities for sacrifical standing stones! It has a certain unintentionally comic element, but it's an engaging little curio and I liked the Devon moorland setting. It is left to Frederick Cowles to say the last word, which funnily enough represents a slide back in time to the mid-Victorian era with Princess Of Darkness, with its charmingly evil heroine and lush Eastern European backdrop. I quite enjoyed the blend of old-fashioned vampirism and modern, more concise writing style, and the ending managed to surprise me too.
All in all Dracula's Brood is a really first-class anthology, with enough obscure material to satisfy the most well-read fan of vampire fiction (and ghost stories in general.) Like the other Equation Chillers, it also benefits from a scholarly introduction by Dalby which places Dracula in its historical, social and literary context. There are even some lurid illustrations, including a reproduction of John Tenniel's satirical cartoon 'The Irish "Vampire"', which depicts a huge bat with, frankly, Bram Stoker's face, hovering over a sleeping Victorian belle whose bizarre proportions surely owe very little to Nature. What more do you want? Blood? :p You can also visit The Vault of Evil discussion board for a full contents list and a bit of discussion.
